Category: Quick games

Games that can be learned and played quickly, typically under 30 minutes

Crazy Ates

Yes, you read that right. Crazy Ates, not Crazy Eights. Most of you know the original, Crazy Eights, with the boring numbers, but Crazy Ates steps it up a level: each number has a food allocated to it!Crazy Ates

Possibly my favorite is 10, the banana split. But what’s really fun is when you add the colors. You know how in Crazy Eights, there are colors as well as numbers to match? Hopefully, you know what I’m talking about. Anyways, something my cousins and I like to do is think of a food of that color and add it to the dish of that number. For example, a blue number 3 could be the blue cheese burger. Or a purple 9 could be an eggplant quiche. It adds just a little more flavor to the original play.

8 stands as the wild card, depicted by a steak with ice cream on top (please don’t ask). If you don’t have a matching number or color to the card in play as of your turn, you can play your favorite dead cow topped with dairy to get you out of drawing! The goal of the game is to be the first person without any cards left.

Both the Crazy Eights and Crazy Ates are simple and good for little kids while not being brain-numbingly boring for the adults. There’s still a level of strategy involved, even if it is pretty small.

 

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Time to go to the Robot Lab!

This week I’d like to introduce a Kickstarter game called Robot Lab. I’ll give you one guess on what it’s about: yup, it’s about robots!

In Robot Lab, you each choose a color for the body of your robot. As you draw cards throughout the game, you have two goals: get a head, two arms and two legs of your robot’s color attached to your robot, and stop your opponent from reaching that goal.Robot Lab

You can do this by using your “attach” turn to attach a piece you don’t want onto their robot. For instance, if they’re building an orange robot, and you’re building blue, and they had no head, you could use your turn to attach a red head from your hand onto their robot.

This game could theoretically be adapted to be cooperative or single-player, but I think that would take a lot of the fun out of it. One of the best parts is that it takes the Munchkin aspect of stabbing your friend in the back to simplest form. No fancy, triple-card moves, just a wrong colored arm and a turn to spare.

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Harry Potter Trivia!

For all of the Potterheads like me out there, it turns out there is now a Harry Potter Trivia game! I found it at Hot Topic when I was spending some gift cards I got for my birthday.Harry Potter Trivial Pursuit

The questions were in six categories, each assigned to a different color: The Dark Arts: Purple; Hogwarts: Blue; Magical Spells & Potions: Pink; Magical Objects: Orange; Magical People: Yellow; and Animals & Magical Creatures: Green. Questions in a category could range from “What creature did Hagrid introduce to the class during his first lesson?” to “What type of dragon does Cedric Diggory face in the first task of the Triwizard Tournament?”.

For my first game, I played with Mom, but then she had to go make dinner. Luckily, one of the perks of this game is that you can play it by yourself, too. Be forewarned: some of the questions are very hard.

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Let’s build a Treehouse!

Treehouse is another Pyramid Arcade game from Looney Labs. In Treehouse, you have one trio of pyramids each. You also have one in the center. Over the course of the game, you are trying to change your trio to match the trio in the center (or, occasionally, vice versa).Treehouse

I love how simple this game is. There are rules for how you are allowed to move the pieces, but, on principle, the actual gameplay is quick and easy.

That saying, it does take a little while to get acquainted with the movement rules. They are, however, very similar to the other Pyramid Arcade rules.

Because of the many colors of pyramids, we played with light blue trees. This can be amusing, to say that you had ice trees, or trees on fire.

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Royal Toad

Royal Toad is a card game by SimplyFun. In it, the whole deck is dealt out to the players. You are, throughout the game, removing any duplicate characters you have in your hand. You get these when you draw a card from the person next to you. You win by being the last person with any cards, and that card has to be the Royal Toad.

I like how simple the game is. It has smooth, simple mechanics, but at the same time you can choose exactly which card you want to take. Thus makes it a strategy game as well as chance.Royal Toad

You cannot play this well with two people. If you do, you will always know who has the Toad, making it less fun.

Its really fun to try and figure out who has the toad. It’s kind of a bluffing game, since you’re trying not to give away the fact that you have the toad.

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Max

Max is a cooperative kids board game where you are trying to get the little critters (Chipmunk, Mouse and Bird) to the tree before Max (the cat) catches up to them. It was one of my first games and my first cooperative board game.Max

I like the aspect of choice. A lot of kids’ games, you just pick up the card and hope it goes in your favor. In Max, you get to choose which critter to move on a given turn.

I think, if you put your mind to it, it’s pretty hard to lose. I wouldn’t know, because recently my goal has been to make the cat win. Meanwhile the other player (my cousin) has been trying to get the animals to the tree. Thus, it can also be a competitive game. In the picture above, my cousin had successfully gotten the chipmunk to safety when I rolled double black, so Max ate the other two.

I think the treats and trails are cute. There are four cat treats, so if Max gets too close to the critters for your comfort, you can call him back to his starting point. There are also trails, one for each critter. When they land on their trail, they take the trail to wherever it ends. They’re effectively shortcuts. Unfortunately, Max, if he lands on it, will also take the trails.

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I have a Brain in a Box!

Or I have a BrainBox game. I’m really excited about this one, as I have had a BrainBox game for quite a while. I actually got my first one at Brookfield Zoo a while back. We kept it in the car and I would read the cards on long drives. Eventually I found out how to play and started playing with my grandmother before school.Nature BrainBox

In BrainBox, you reach into the box, choosing a card at random. Simultaneously, the other person turns the timer and you start reading the card. You have ten seconds to memorize as much as you can. When the other person says “Time” (or something similar) marking the end of the ten seconds, you hand over the card. You roll the die (eight-sided) and the other person reads you the question on the back of the card that corresponds with that number. If you answer correctly, you keep the card in your score pile. If you don’t, you put it back in the box.

I love the facts. I have a big thing for random facts, as anyone who knows me can confirm. The fun facts and little tidbits of information scattered everywhere in this game are right up my ally.

The questions can be quite random. I first found this out when I was playing the US States one a while back. I had pulled the Florida card. I read it, flipped it, rolled, and was completely confident in my ability to answer. I read the question confidently, ready to burst out the answer. “How many oranges are pictured?” Wait… what? I have since realized that a lot of the question are based on the pictures. For instance, on the Flightless Birds card of the Nature box, I once had a question that read, “Which bird has its legs crossed?”

This game is fast and can be concluded whenever it is necessary. At the peak of our playing time, Grandma and I could go through the whole box of over fifty cards in less than an hour!

Also, as I have just recently found out there is an online version, at the website linked to above.

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Time for Gym class!

Gym class… yuck. Not anymore! Introducing Gym, the card game. In Gym you pick teams based off of how good each kid is at each game. Most kids will have two games that they are moderately good at. The “brats” only have one skill each, probably because they are busy being brats. Then there is the play phase where you designate kids to games, move them around and mess with the other person’s cards in an attempt to win the tournament.Gym

I love that somebody made Gym class a card game. Now, can I pass it off as doing Gym? I doubt it. Ah, well. It’s still amusing.

I wish they tied into the actual games in gym more. They have the special powers as basketball and dodgeball and such, but I really don’t see how dictating which kid they use next constitutes as football.

It’s one of the Pack O’Games, so it is by definition small. It’s a fun game and a quick play. Some questions about the relativity to gym class withholding, it is a great game with a lot of potential.

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Wait… What? Are You Phrazy?

Are You Phrazy is a fast-paced conversation game. In it, you are racing to get rid of all of your cards by interrupting people. You can interrupt if you have the same card as the last one played or if you are the person clockwise of the previous player.Are You Phrazy?

It is hilarious because everyone reads their card off as they play it, and the conversation is so random it makes no sense. “Hello, how are you?” “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!” “Hubba, hubba!” “I know you are, but what am I?” “Can the chatter!”

If you do not like fast-paced games, do not play this. It is very fast moving, as well as strategic. Finding the cards in your hand can be a challenge, choosing when to play a “stop” card is strategy that has to be carefully done, and you have to do it all before someone else.

On the other hand, fast-paced makes it good for points when you may need to leave anytime, like when you are waiting for a ride to pick you up.

 

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Garden Gnomis

Gnomi is a cute game about compost, gnomes and mushrooms. As we all know mushrooms have a high magical content when dealing with fairies and gnomes. Or, if you didn’t know, now you do (“What can I say except you’re welcome…”). Gnomi is kind of like Spy in the fact that the cards always remain in your hand.Gnomi

You have two types of cards: gnomes and mushrooms. You start with four mushrooms and three gnomes. Mushrooms can be used as follows: use one mushroom to ask for one mushroom of that color or use two mushrooms to get any mushroom regardless of color. “Using” a mushroom means you flip it upside down, which is called “composting”.

The gnomes have special abilities that allow them to steal mushrooms, grow mushrooms from the compost (flip the mushroom back to usable), and wake other gnomes. “Waking” a gnome happens because when you use the gnome, it gets flipped over to say that it is “asleep” and not usable.

The game ends when only one person has good mushrooms or awake gnomes left.

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